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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Desk Set

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Spencer Tracy and
Katherine Hepburn. I like Hepburn in BRINGING UP BABY and THE PHILADELPHIA
STORY, but that's about it. I enjoy Tracy's work a little more, especially in
movies like BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK and INHERIT THE WIND. And I have to admit,
they work well together in the movies where they teamed up.

DESK SET is one of those I hadn't seen until now. Hepburn plays the head of the
research and reference department at a TV network. Tracy is the developer of an
"electronic brain" that Hepburn thinks is going to replace her and
the three women who work in her department (the great Joan Blondell, a young
and very lovely Dina Merrill, and Sue Randall, who to some of us will always be
Miss Landers, the teacher Beaver Cleaver had a crush on). Gig Young is the TV
executive who's Hepburn's on-again-off-again boyfriend. Put all that in place
and complications and misunderstandings ensue.

There are a couple of really funny scenes in this movie, made that way mostly
by Tracy's droll delivery of his lines, and a lot of mildly amusing ones.
"Mild" is a good word overall for this movie. Its plot is an
interesting look at the early days of computers moving into business. There's
even a credit thanking IBM for its assistance. I enjoyed it enough to be glad
that I finally saw it, although I'm not sure how I missed it, as many times as
it showed on local TV when I was growing up.